


The Professor and her Box

by Galaxy_Cerebri



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternative Universe - Doctor who, Claude and Hilda are brotp, Companion!Claude, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Sort of Death, Time lord!Byleth, qpps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 17:50:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxy_Cerebri/pseuds/Galaxy_Cerebri
Summary: Then his friend became the living embodiment of the concept of water itself (or something, he still wasn’t sure what was going on) and followed them throughout all space and time. That was a fun way to lose your best friend and find out your teacher was a near immortal alien.Where Byleth is the time lord masquerading as a professor, and Claude is the scheming human she saves.





	The Professor and her Box

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on EoLS and started watching Doctor Who for background noise, and because I have 0 impulse control I made this. May add to it as a series of one shots, who knows? This is based on the series 10 episode 'The Pilot', but here Claude and Hilda are best friends/Queer Platonic Partners and she's sorta dead but not. You don't really have to watch the episode to get it though.
> 
> not beta'd

He called her Teach. It was a simple nickname he had for the crazy professor that turned out to have a spaceship phone box that was bigger on the inside. The woman who would casually play an electrical guitar rendition of Beethoven’s fifth symphony as she explained the difference between relativity and special relativity. Yknow, _ quantum physics _. She made it fun. She made it amazing.

Then his friend became the living embodiment of the concept of water itself (or something, he still wasn’t sure what was going on) and followed them throughout all space and time. That was a fun way to lose your best friend and find out your teacher was a near immortal alien. (He should have seen it coming with her insanely blue eyes that weren't naturally possible. The way she just always seemed otherworldly, the way she knew _ everything _ and could teach it all. All that and the way she wore a hoodie under a trench coat. An interesting ensemble that, somehow, she made work.)

He couldn’t hear it, her heartbeat that is (did her race not have them?), when she quietly pulled him into a hug on the floor of the Tardis. (Large silent tears, rolling onto her blazer as she held him tight. Reminded him that he still mattered in their infinite universe. Reminded him that he wasn’t just a speck in something incalculable.) “Why me?” he asked, sniffling. “Why did you ask me to come to your office that day? Why did you offer to tutor me?”

(He needed to know. He needed something to make _ sense _ in this mess. He needed to know something true at the very least.)

“Did you know,” she started, her voice blank and soothing. Not expecting anything from him, not vying for some secret he kept. “That when most people don’t understand something, they get confused. They get annoyed.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” He asked, lifting his head from where he nestled it in her shoulder. (Her fingers running through his hair as she quietly comforted him. Hilda wasn’t coming back. Loud and incorrigible Hilda. Her little machinations, a perfect compliment to his scheming. And it was gone. She wasn’t dead, but she might as well be.)

“You don’t do that,” she explained, her eyes moving from the ceiling (Circular glyphs etched into the metal with perfect geometry. Indecipherable words he would never understand. Her past, her present, all wrapped into one) to look at him. “When you don’t understand something, you smile. The children of my world were much the same. We venerated knowledge and understanding. But now it is gone and has been for a long time. So I take comfort where I can find it.”

“Is that what will happen to me? Or will I just forget?” he inquired. (He didn’t want to forget Hilda. Not the way she laughed, or the way she smiled, or the way she’d hold your hand when you weren’t sure what to do. The way she’d knock on your door with snacks and drinks and you’d shit talk a professor - not his Teach, never his Teach - together until the bleak hours of the morning. He didn’t want to forget.)

“We never truly forget,” she replied, “It just becomes easier for us. One day, remembering her won’t hurt as much. One day you will be able to say her name and remember her fondly. You’ll remember the jokes you shared and the way you laughed together and it won’t feel like a knife to the heart. But it will take time.”

Her arms tightened around him as his head returned to her shoulder. His breaths deep, like he’d run a marathon. (He might have, the places he’d seen, he’d had to run through. The people he’d spoken to assure them that everything was just fine, when it really _ wasn’t. _If only for a moment, it felt like he had everything in his hands. Then he realised it came at the price of her. Then it wasn’t worth it. But it wasn’t a deal he could renege on.)

“Take me somewhere, some time,” he begged, voice muffled by the skin of her neck.

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” he replied, “Just not here.”

“You can’t run forever, Claude. Believe me, I tried.”

“I’m not running, I’m searching. And maybe one day, fate will bless me.”

(She’d offered her hand to him, as she stood there. Dripping wet from the space water/fuel she’d become one with. She’d shown him the universe in that single moment they had held hands. Stars being born and dying in turn. She wasn’t dead, so maybe someday they’d see each other again. The universe was an infinite place with equally endless possibilities after all.)


End file.
